A Drop of Midnight: A Memoir

by Jason Timbuktu Diakité

The coat. Woven of the same cotton he and all his family before him were forced to pick from dawn to dusk.

Jason Michael Bosak Diakité. I was never American, never Swedish, never white but never black either. I was a no-man’s-land in the world.

Chicken and jurisprudence might be the two things Dad loves most in the world, aside from his wife.

Dad’s gaze finds its way over the top edge of his reading glasses and he gives me a look, the one that says, You still have so much to learn, son. But with love.

The food part was important, you know. Anyone who gives you food is also giving you love. By the way . . . does your wife cook for you?”

That’s one thing that can be said for the South: neither slavery nor the Klan could destroy the hospitality.

Mom smiles dreamily. I know she’s had three great loves in her life, three pairs of hands to which she has entrusted her heart.

The tiniest difference is a target for oppression, and I’m as ruthless toward them as my tormentors are toward me.

My clenched fists echo with my mom’s and dad’s affirmative reminders that I am beautiful, and a result of their love—no matter what white boys think.

The words don’t just run off my back; the pain doesn’t pass. I’m not aware of it, but in responding with silence, I allow the opinions of those around me to become reality—and I aim my hatred inward.

The rhymes are as raw as the graffiti-covered brownstones, the abandoned buildings, and the sidewalks where blades of grass grow through the cracks. It’s Harlem, the Bronx, and Brooklyn.

So with rap music in my ears and with newfound pride in my black skin, the void in my soul is filled. Dad and his friends become my oracles, eternal founts of black information. I can ask them about Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, Booker T. Washington, Harlem, Chicago, Billie Holiday—anything I want to know. They welcome my awakening with open arms.

They paint detailed, colorful pictures of lives lived with black skin around that brown, oval wooden table, which will end up in my kitchen in Södermalm many years later.

That feeling I get during those first few writing sessions in my childhood bedroom on Göingegatan 6 is irresistible, and it will come to define and shape the rest of my life.

I’m overwhelmed with sympathy for him, and it strikes me that the guilt-trip is an inherited sin. As far back as I can remember, my dad has called, emailed, and texted the very same sentence to me: Come home. I’m lonely and I miss you. He must have inherited it from Grandpa. We’re linked together by an invisible chain of behavior that’s been hammered into us by our parents.

We humans may have endless plans, schedules, ideas, and desires, but death can step right in and put an end to everything. In the middle of a sentence.

Soul is the same as feeling, and the feeling has to be right, or else neither music nor food will work.

She waits for her words to sink in, and when I respond with a “That’s really tragic,” she punctuates it with a loud, “Who you tellin’!” Not like a question, more like an amen or a now you get what I mean. She speaks in headlines.

How could this innocent, soft, beautiful plant in my palm rouse such greediness in people? How could we take these gifts from nature and be so quick to enslave and kill because of them? Cotton, diamonds, oil, gold . . .

It’s as if history freezes in the moment. History is what hurts. If you open it up for a closer look, you risk your own destruction.

“Why does it say ‘Timbuktu’ next to Myla’s name?” I asked Dad. “That’s what she was called. She’s your relative.” “But that’s incredible, I mean, I call myself Timbuktu, and I had no idea that’s what she was called, back when I chose that name.” “Well, maybe she’s talking to you.”

There must be at least four sides to this coin. The police, the human rights activists, the criminals, and the plain old nine-to-fivers—and none of the groups seem to have much empathy or understanding for the views of the others.

Eternally a visitor in my family’s hometown, I trot around the wide boulevards full of a peculiar sensation. Harlem makes me feel just as white as a lecture hall at Lund University made me feel black. But it’s there, in the space between—between races, between colors, between the narrative—that I have built myself a place to live. In the in-between-ness.

They laugh loudly. “I just can’t believe it! Alright, well ain’t this something!” These two friends haven’t seen each other in fifty years and have just happened to run into each other on a Monday afternoon on the northern tip of an oblong island where five million other people crowd the sidewalks and streets.

Is it possible to move forward if we don’t acknowledge our roles in history, whatever they are?

How will that drop of midnight, that melanin left in our line but watered down through the generations, reveal itself?

A good laugh seems to be the only medicine for tragedy.

Their cynicism has become pathological. In their case, maybe it’s just easier to hope as much of the white world burns up as possible, the world that has oppressed them, their families, their forefathers.

The great difference between them and me is that I grew up believing that I have certain rights that no one can take away from me, while they grew up with the certainty that society would never lift a finger to help them—in fact, society would destroy them for the tiniest misstep.

“Dick Gregory said it best,” Don continues. “The white man lives in the penthouse, which is why more white people commit suicide than blacks do. You know, if you already live in the basement, there’s nowhere to jump from.”

“Fuck Marco Polo, I choose you.” Don laughs. “Your travels, your words, your songs. They lift me up. One day you’re in the Congo, you’re in Ethiopia the next, and the day after that you’re in Alabama. Goddamn, boy. None of us here has ever before done what you do.”

Grandpa was a steady man who kept his eyes on the sidewalk and thought you should be thankful for what you had, and she was a whirlwind striving for something greater, her eyes on the horizon.

“Your origin is the life our people lived before the white man tore us away from the soil of Africa and shipped us across the Atlantic in chains. Your heritage is the history of the African people, and who we were when we built the empire. We are a proud people with a proud history and strong cultures. It is our duty to learn who we are so we will know where to go in life. The segregated United States is no place for my children. So you will grow up in Africa instead.”